English Professor's Work Wins "Best Play" Award

Language Barrier, a one-act play written by Dr. Andrew Ade, Westminster College associate professor of English, won the Best Play Award at the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater Company's seventh annual Theatre Festival in Black and White.

Language Barrier is the story of two collaborating women graduate students whose blossoming friendship is destroyed after an undergraduate student reveals a personal secret during a campus office visit.

"I am particularly happy that this latest play began as a new-reading opportunity at Westminster," Ade said.

The first reading of Language Barrier was at Westminster in February 2009. The roles of the graduate students were read by Dr. Helen Boylan, Westminster associate professor of chemistry, and Dr. Pamela Richardson, Westminster assistant professor of mathematics. Kirstyn Gecina, a 2010 Westminster graduate, read the part of the undergraduate student.

"That reading and the subsequent audience comments were extremely helpful in showing me where the play worked and where it needed fixing," Ade said.

Ade completed the final rewrite of the play during a residency fellowship at Hambridge Center for the Creative Arts in Georgia over the summer.

"To see the revised play performed by gifted Pittsburgh actresses in the Cultural District, and then to receive the Best Play award, is a tribute to Westminster's encouragement of creative work," Ade said.

This is the second of Ade's plays to win at the Theatre Festival in Black and White. A Question of Taste won Best Play honors in 2007. He is the Festival's only two-time winner.

"Winning a second time is an amazing feeling, especially since I had expected another play, a crime thriller, to win," Ade said.

This has been a busy year for Ade, with a Kennedy Center National Teaching Artist Grant in January, the production of A Question of Taste at Georgia College and State University in March, two residency fellowships in playwriting over the summer, and the production of Language Barrier in October.

Ade is currently at work on a text-based performance piece in French and two full-length American-life plays.

"I am very fortunate to have won some awards, but that outcome never crosses your mind when you are writing the plays," Ade said. "You can only concentrate on translating the play in your mind into the version you want to see on paper. Even if no one wants the play you've scripted, it's satisfying just to have accomplished the task of getting it written in the first place. That's the first lesson in playwriting: finish the play you started."

Ade, who has been with Westminster since 2003, earned an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and master's and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Contact Ade at (724) 946-7349 or e-mail adeaw@westminster.edu for additional information.

Dr. Andrew Ade